Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Never Fade

This is the second book in the series; I reviewed the first book, The Darkest Minds, HERE.

This review will undoubtedly contain spoilers about the first book as it is the second book in the series.

This book is not set to be released to the general public until October 15, 2013. I did read the advanced reader's copy that I received at the ALA conference. I also got to meet the author and get a signed copy of the first book, and she signed my ARC. All of the nerd out moments. BOOKS ARE SO FREAKING COOL GUYS. :D

There also seems to be an ebook bridge book between The Darkest Minds and Never Fade which I unfortunately have not acquired. But said ebook, In Time, can be found HERE.

NOW, I can finally move onto the amazon summary, "Ruby never asked for the abilities that almost cost her her life. Now she must call upon them on a daily basis, leading dangerous missions to bring down a corrupt government and breaking into the minds of her enemies. Other kids in the Children's League call Ruby "Leader", but she knows what she really is: a monster.When Ruby is entrusted with an explosive secret, she must embark on her most dangerous mission yet: leaving the Children's League behind. Crucial information about the disease that killed most of America's children-and turned Ruby and the others who lived into feared and hated outcasts-has survived every attempt to destroy it. But the truth is only saved in one place: a flashdrive in the hands of Liam Stewart, the boy Ruby once believed was her future-and who now wouldn't recognize her. As Ruby sets out across a desperate, lawless country to find Liam-and answers about the catastrophe that has ripped both her life and America apart-she is torn between old friends and the promise she made to serve the League. Ruby will do anything to protect the people she loves. But what if winning the war means losing herself?" AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE AND WHY ISN'T THIS BOOK BEING RELEASED SOONERNOW. As this is an advanced reader's copy, I WILL NOT reveal anything past the first thirty percent of the book. My copy is 507 pages long, the thirty percent mark is at 152 pages, but the next chapter begins on page 156. So I'm stretching it a teensy bit by a few pages.

I'm going to do my best to summarize the book better than amazon did....because really, did you just read that? At least they didn't do a halfway through the book point. That's nice.

They just tended to leave out all the gruesome details.

This isn't a happy world that Ruby dwells within; it's fraught with survival, extra abilities, and adults who just don't seem to know how to control themselves. It's madness, yet with how the world is built, it's easy to see what happened to drive it to this point, to this far.

In the first book we saw the cruelty of camp Thurmond and once Ruby escaped, the devastation of the country. Chubs, Zu, and Liam all traveled together in a minivan searching for a children's haven, East River, set up by the slip kid. The country is in a state of disrepair.

The second book picks up with the same gruesome reality of America and doesn't seem to hold back. Ruby has joined up with the Children's League and has become a leader of her group of different colored kids; Vida (blue), Jude (yellow), and Nico (green). Cate is in charge of them and her life with the Children's League isn't anymore pleasant than Thurmond. Ruby weathers through it until Nico and Jude bring to her attention that there are adult members of their units that are taking out the children. Blake was a green put out on assignment (unusual), Jude and Nico managed to get the footage of the moment his 'watcher' (adult) put a bullet in his back.

Every kid has a target on their back no matter where they are it seems.

Ruby meets up with Cole (Liam's brother) as she is asked to interrogate him when she accesses his memories and discovers that he saw Liam and that Liam also made off with a very valuable USB drive on accident.

The trick is, Ruby has to get out of the compound without anyone knowing what her goal is: to find Liam and retrieve the flash drive. She waits and waits until she's given a mission, but Jude is assigned to go on the mission with her. Ruby knows that if she leaves Jude, they'll kill him.

On the mission, Ruby manages to snag Jude away and they make a run for it. Jude has a slip and they get picked up but he manages to terminate the electricity in the car and make their escape once more. They head out on their mission and Vida meets up with them (unbeknownst to Ruby, Cate and Cole sent her separately to help with the mission). Ruby manages to get them to the house with a few particular bumps on the way when they run into Chubs.

Chubs is alive!

Annddddd that's all the summary I'm giving out. That is page 152. Done.

Now I left out some meatier chunks of drama plot story because again, I don't want to reveal too much of the book before it's even been released. I'll talk about some aspects instead.

The gruesome parts of the story are very realistic and cold cut; there is no pulling of the punches to contain the horror that happens in the country since kids have been on the run, etc.

The character development of Ruby seems so well done considering that she spent most of her 'growing years' in a rehabilitation camp. There are a lot of issues that she's forced to deal with and it's kind of beautiful as she stumbles through it as well as continually learning how to better use her powers.

I loved Vida, Jude, Nico, and the return of some characters from the last book (like Chubs).

The only aspect that I didn't particularly care for where a lot of moments when some physical damage would happen to Ruby and she would be like OW, but carry on anyways. There didn't seem to be a realistic relationship between her own body being in pain and her brain. However, that could be a spin on the powers of the Orange; are they able to ignore their weakened bodies in favor of their minds because brain power? I don't know.

The book was pretty exciting for the whole read and I'm looking forward to the third one.